Vice President of Advertising

At Times Union in Albany, our employees are motivated to inform, inspire, and provoke while being honest, relentless, fearless, and startlingly original. In order to be successful in our mission, it’s important that we maintain a culture built on continuous learning, integrity, authenticity and innovation. We believe in helping our employees tell their own stories through professional development and boundless opportunity, and in return ensure they have a deep understanding of how their contributions help tell the story of one of the most celebrated media organizations in the world. 

POSITION OVERVIEW 

The Vice President of Advertising provides leadership, direction, and resource stewardship to the organization’s sales function. As the organization’s most senior sales leader, the VP is accountable for overall advertising sales performance, the profitable achievement of sales goals, setting and executing a sales strategy for both company and client success; must have a strong digital acumen and understanding of next generation sales tools to achieve business strategy. The position will reside in Albany NY. 

CANDIDATE PROFILE 

• Strategic- Thinks critically about the organization, opportunity, sales process and go to market strategy. Devises structured plans to attack and surpass our revenue goals. 
• Digital- proven track record of driving digital growth through strategy, structure, product diversification and sales roadmap; exudes confidence in digital publishing and clearly communicates the value of audience and data driven solutions; achieves desired client outcomes to retain and grow customer base and satisfaction. Challenges the status quo; innovative and curious.
• Analytical- Understands trends and the cause and effect of them. Immerse themselves into Key Performance Metrics and guide sales teams to optimum productivity. Dives into Salesforce pipeline and outcomes to drive sales execution across all functional sales roles within the organization.  Can define necessary operational needs for execution by customer experience, client relationship and marketing teams across the organization.
• Able to Energize and Transform – A leader who loves to instill client success as the number one priority. They thrive in the grind of the business. They are curious about “what is next” for the sales culture of growth. Does not watch training but strategically develops it to move the organization into a solution selling discipline and actively participates in the learnings. A confident, thoughtful individual who guides, coaches, and walks the walk.
• A Culture Fanatic – Creates a culture of high performance through learning, excitement and ensuring success of the team. A naturally positive person who is transparent, a visionary, and honest. Pulls people up but is also adamant about what is expected and holds people accountable. 

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Aligns the sales organization’s objectives with business strategy through active participation in local and corporate strategic planning, sales strategy development, forecasting, sales resource planning, and budgeting. 
• Accountable for effective advertising organization design, including advertising job roles, sales channel design, and sales resource deployment. 
• Meets assigned targets for profitable sales volume, market share, and other key financial performance objectives. 
• Develops and supports strategic plans and goals to grow advertiser customer base and associated product lines.
• Implement sales strategies for new and existing accounts.
• In conjunction with corporate and local partners, develop strategies to aid in the management of relationships with prospects from pre-proposal to closing of sale to meet short- and long-term sales objectives. 
• Leads learning and development initiatives impacting the sales organization and provides stewardship of sales and sales management talent. 
• Establishes learning and development objectives essential to the advertising organization’s success, oversees the effective delivery of training and development programs, actively assesses the value of training and development investments, and monitors learning and development outcomes to ensure high ROI. 
• Fosters a culture of accountability, professional development, high-performance, and ethical behavior.
• Oversees and is accountable for annual operating budget for all of Advertising.
• Leads advertising organization change initiative by continuously assessing the need for organizational change and removing impeding obstacles.
• Establishes and maintains productive peer-to-peer relationships with customers/prospects, community partners, corporate partners,